His plan was inspired by it, but is not the same.
The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was widely acknowledged to be, in the immortal words of CNN’s Dana Bash, a “shitshow.” Scarcely a full sentence or coherent thought was heard the entire night. Trump interrupted so often and told so many lies that Fox News moderator Chris Wallace was rendered ornamental. We should probably all just forget it as soon as possible — but before we do, it’s worth looking a little closer at one brief episode. To everyone’s surprise (it wasn’t on the advance list of topics), Chris Wallace asked a question about climate change. As is to be expected from a conservative, he framed it as a trade-off between the environment and the economy. In the ensuing shouting, Trump accused Biden of supporting “the radical Green New Deal,” which he alleged would cost “$100 trillion.” (For those who are wondering, that number is from a ludicrous “study” of the GND by the right-wing American Action Forum.) Biden responded, “The Green New Deal is not my plan.” Then, just a few minutes later, he said, “The Green New Deal will pay for itself as we move forward.” Then, minutes later, “No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.” He supports “the Biden plan, which is different than what [Trump] calls the radical Green New Deal.” Minutes later, sleuths on the right turned up language on Biden’s website calling the Green New Deal a “crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” Right-wing media worked furiously to make this a story, trying to start an intra-left feud by saying that Biden was repudiating the radical left. It doesn’t seem to have worked. Climate activists, like Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the Sunrise Movement, didn’t take the bait, perhaps because it was a little too obvious what Trump was trying to do. Nonetheless, it’s worth spelling out exactly what’s going on here, because it’s part of a political dynamic that goes back decades — and may finally, at long last, be changing. Republicans are working furiously to shore up the “environment versus economy” frame Around the time of Ronald Reagan and the ascendance of movement conservatism, the GOP began lumping environmental policy into the same big bucket as all progressive social or economic policy: pie-in-the-sky dreams that would raise taxes and damage the economy. Thanks to decades of subsequent repetition — often echoed by defensive Clinton-era Democrats — the “environment vs. economy” frame has become ubiquitous enough to seep out of politics into popular culture. Even people who claim to know very little about politics will have the impression, the feeling, that it’s true. It was through that basic frame that climate change entered US politics. I’ve argued for years (2010,2013) that climate is ill-suited to that frame, that calling it “environmental” serves to shrink and distort it in the public mind. But despite my best efforts, that’s how it was discussed for most of the 2000s and 2010s. Climate advocates beat their heads against the frame for years, talking about “green jobs,” new industries, and competing with China in global markets. Then-Rep. Jay Inslee co-wrote a whole book about the green economy back in 2013. Thanks in no small part to the youth climate movement and the Green New Deal resolution, formally introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in February 2019, that frame finally seems to be giving way, at least among Democrats, at least on climate change. Within the party, the center of gravity on climate has moved considerably to the left and there is more policy alignment than at any time in recent memory. As conservative tropes lose their potency outside the bubble, those inside the bubble double and triple down on them. So it is with the Green New Deal. From the outset, the right has worked frantically to define the GND as the most unrealistic, socialist environmental plan yet. As I wrote last April, in the months following the introduction of the GND, Fox News discussed it more than CNN and MSNBC combined and its viewers evinced the highest awareness of it.
